Cancer care in Wales

8 thoughts on “Cancer care in Wales”

1. ‘Surveys of cancer patients add to this positive picture.’

   How many of those that died were included within this survey?

   Wales cannot keep subjecting its citizens to myth upon myth just because it suits ‘the narrative’. It’s time we woke up and smelt the coffee …….. no matter what we got taught in school!

2. I wish people on the payroll would stop talking about cancer as if it is one disease.

3. Everybody probably generates ‘cancer’ cells that have the ability to evolve/mutate into ‘tumours’ all the time, every minute of the day, all through your life even though they aren’t detected or mopped up by the immune system. Cancer is not a ‘disease’ as such if you want to use exact terminology. Cancer cells are just not recognised by your own immune system because they are still ‘you’ and are thus ‘autoimmune’.
   Abnormally functioning mutated cells, which are generated all the time in small numbers, have defects (in their DNA) that means they don’t live very long in the relatively hostile environment of the blood stream (too much oxygen) but some, if they find or drift into, in the few minutes after mutation, a small corner of your body that has the right environment for them to ‘get a grip’, may go on to form a tumour. The conditions that favour the cancer cells (anaerobic) to ‘get a grip’ may often be related to the condition of your blood and its ability to coagulate. Thus drinking alcohol, smoking, obesity, and other delightful habits that we all indulge in all affect the ability of your blood to coagulate and cancer cells will thrive in small little microclots in stressed parts of your vital organs. They get stuck into you by what is known as ‘angiogenesis’ which is how cancerous cells will develop its own blood supply to create a protective cocoon around itself. That is why so much ‘research’ is going into ‘anti-angiogenesis’ drugs by BigPharma. This is despite the knowledge (to haematologists) that the most effective ‘anti-angiogenesis’ (and thus anti-cancer) drug is… wait for it, aspirin! This anti-factor XIIIa agent is of no interest to BigPharma because they can’t make any money out of it.
   So can you avoid cancer? No. Most people’s lifestyle, in this country, mitigates against the eventuality/certainty that a cancer cell will find a cosy little microclot to sit in and evolve. This is why they keep telling us that one in two people will have cancer at sometime in their lives usually at the end where autopsies find that older cadavers are often riddled with tumours. The actual cause of death is usually something else like a viral infection, or heart/organ failure.
   So do I have hope and expectation that we can ‘conquer’ cancer? No. But I am very hopeful that it can be ‘treated’, ameliorated and we can live with it often to an age as long as we would normally live. Might be a good idea though to cut down on the chip butties.

4. When do facts become myths Karen? When they don’t fit your prejudices?

   This is of course a partial picture. The Welsh NHS is relatively good at many sorts of cancer treatment. It is relatively poor at some other stuff.

5. Correction to my earlier comment. Cancer is not an ‘autoimmune’ condition. Cancer cells are generally ‘immune’ because they are recognised as ‘self’. MS and similar are ‘autoimmune’. My bad.

6. My husband died of lung cancer 3 years ago and so I am commenting from one, subjective experience of one type of cancer and its treatment in Wales. What was not so good was the process of diagnosis; hospital based treatment, once you were ‘in the system’ was excellent and access to chemotherapy locally was a great bonus; support and back up services in the community/home were less well organised but were very good when you could access them; there is a great reliance on voluntary sector services – MacMillan in hospital and hospice organisations for end of life care and it is unclear how the system would survive without them.

7. I had an early stage invasive breast cancer diagnosed and treated last year after a suspicious mammogram.
   I nearly didn’t bother to go for the scan, because mammograms are uncomfortable and the advice about whether they are beneficial or not is fatally hesitant and confusing. Certainly my GP would never have detected it because I had no symptoms, other than unexplained tiredness, and no “lump”. But even I could see it on the screen, and a biopsy was done within an hour after a check mammogram.

   All the tests and treatments, as well as the patient care, at Singleton Hospital were excellent, especially the availability of the patient hostel during radiotherapy, but the timetable slipped quite a lot, which was scary.

   Most people in Wales are completely unaware that diet and lifestyle are implicated in around 40% of cancers, and that essentially the same evidence-based dietary and lifestyle advice will lower your risk of developing many cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes AND dementia. There is still terrible fatalism around cancer. Better public health advice and better ways of delivering it – are needed, as well as the inclusion of dieticians in GP and oncology teams, not just in self-help centres such as Maggie’s, excellent though they are – but stable doors come to mind….

8. Agree with many of Chris and Alayne’s comments. After a year of to-ing and fro-ing to various docs with a persistent tickly throat (diagnosis – “some sort of allergy”) I finally saw a GP who actually took the time to read my notes and ask questions. She said she thought she knew what it might be – as did I by that time – and advised paying privately to immediately access a certain Oncologist to avoid what she considered to be a further dangerous delay, which I did. Within a week I’d seen him and had a biopsy at UHW which revealed a carcinoma on the vocal cord. 7 weeks radiotherapy and Cetuximab treatment commenced shortly after at Velindre. I have to say the care and teamwork from everyone involved was absolutely exemplary and I felt in VERY safe hands. The problems only started occurring once I had stopped treatment and was out of Velindre. I had a severe reaction to the Cetuximab and many side effects which were difficult to deal with, and it was quickly apparent that I appeared to fall between health boards (Bro Taf and Cardiff) due to my postcode as regards needing a community nurse to visit. There was no consistency of information, when I needed a nurse to come out it was sometimes impossible to get through or I was told I was not in their region, calls were either not returned or returned days later and the information systems didn’t seem to talk to each other so I was often given conflicting advice – if any. The two Macmillan nurses were wonderful, but so overstretched that again it was usually difficult to get hold of them. Had my partner, who lives 25 miles away, not been given compassionate leave by her employer (the NHS!) to stay and look after me I would have quickly sunk. The UHW speech therapists were fantastic, but dieticians advice I think questionable – only focussing on putting back weight lost via any means possible, which included additive and sugar laden foods such as McDonalds milk shakes, with no regard to the role inflammation has been shown to play in cancer. When I finally read the ingredients of the sickly drinks I was prescribed I threw them away and stuck to home made veg soups made by my partner, although for the next few months it took me over an hour to get a small bowl down as swallowing was extremely painful – I refused to have Fresubin pumped into me via a stoma, which is what they recommended. There was zero awareness of and no advice given on the benefits of organic and natural cancer killing foods such as turmeric, green leaf veg and green tea – which I found extraordinary – and although the subsequent bimonthly checkups have generally been thorough, it is only on the rare occasions when I get to actually see my oncologist that my questions are adequately answered, some lateral thinking is applied without the usual array of prescription drugs being doled out to treat the symptoms and not address the possible causes, futher treaments are proposed, and I again feel I am in the best pair of hands. It is only through my own research that I have identified and eat the best foods I can to avoid the possibility of recurrence in the future, and have a pretty healthy anti-cancer food regime going. I’m very aware I’m lucky to have had a partner to look after me otherwise the story would have been very different, but I do think aftercare can be very random and there is zero advice on how to remain as healthy as possible post-treatment as regards diet and lifestyle. The only actual “advice” I was given was “avoid smoky places”…not particularly helpful.

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